


Progression

by fuckener



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Sam and Kurt meet, and the one time they stay together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Progression

It’s 2010 and Sam meets Kurt for the first time.

*

It’s 1972.

Kurt’s mom has been dead for eight years and his dad has been in Vietnam for six. He lives with his aunt, now, who has church group every night and makes him sleep with a wooden cross over the window opposite his bed - it’ll help God fix him along, she says, meaning the soft way he talks, looks, meaning that he’s sinful. She doesn’t let him talk to the neighbour girls with the dark skin or the Star of David necklace, doesn’t let him do much at all; he becomes quiet and careful and lonelier than he thought was possible a few years before, when the people he loved were still alive, or at least still in Ohio with him.

All he has to look forward to is glimpses of one boy, and even then his aunt is strict - she hates his long hair, his baggy clothes, his hippie parents and their tacky van parked in the church car park, and the more she hates them all the more Kurt stares at him in mass, besotted. Sinful.

Mostly, he sees the boy at school, behind the main building. He sprawls out on the grass and gives Kurt lazy grins when he walks by, smelling of smoke and dirt and boy all the while, and Kurt smiles back, tightly, a quieted part of him desperate to sit down beside him and say hello. 

Once, Kurt passed him in the car-park, lying across the hood of his car with a girl he didn’t know by his side, both of them smelling strong with smoke and looking calm, happy. When Kurt passed, he’d outstretched his hand in offer, the one holding the joint, and asked if he wanted a drag.

Kurt had gotten hot all over watching the smoke pass through those pink, warm looking lips and thinking of it gliding between his own and being breathed back again. “No, thank you,” he’d said, red faced, and he’d kept walking - because he couldn’t cut school or go to class high, not when screwing up there meant he was doomed, completely doomed, no matter how good pretty boys made smoking look.

“That’s cool, that’s okay,” the boy assured him, and when Kurt looked back he was leant up on the car roof to watch him go with that big smile across his face, calling out to him, “You have a good one, alright?”

It’s his voice too, Kurt knows, because his legs feel weak at the low, sated sound of it whenever he says hello or passingly asks how Kurt is. He sings with his guitar sometimes, and Kurt wants to stop and watch him, impossibly lovely in somewhere impossibly alone.

The boy has shaggy, long hair that’s gone blond in the sunshine, same way the tips of Kurt’s do in the summer. The skin of his nose a pretty shade of red from sunburn, and his face is always tanned, shiny, smiling with a lazy contentedness, and the way he looks at Kurt is thrilling and terrifying and more special than anything else left in his life.

It’s Tuesday, and even though Kurt is already late he takes the long way to class so he can walk the pathway at the back of the school and see him there, same as he always does.

This time, the boy is alone, and when he sees Kurt he straightens and tries to unsuccessfully push his bangs out of his eyes. They’re lush green and as bright as halos.

“Hey,” he drawls, lowly, sitting cross-legged on his patch of grass. Kurt doesn’t know if he ever goes to class, or if he’s always here, smiling like that at anyone who walks by - but he selfishly hopes it isn’t the latter.

His big hand touches the green space at his side, indicatively. He nods his head towards it, peeking out of his bangs at Kurt with those warm eyes. “You wanna sit for a while? ‘Cause every time I see you, you’re all tense lookin’.” His grin widens, slowly, invitingly. “You should come sit.”

Kurt stares at him, wide eyed and frozen, clutching the straps of his old backpack tighter than he knows they can handle anymore. His heart ricochets back and forth inside of his chest in an unsteady beat, making him feel dizzy and sick.

It’s love, he thinks, sharply.

“That’s,” he starts, swallowing and glancing around, finding the world miraculously empty around them. He flexes his fingers, fidgety with excitement, and stops looking for bad excuses to say no. Instead, he half-smiles and tries a shaky, “Okay.”

The boy keeps grinning at him, keeps on tempting him.

Carefully, Kurt places himself down by his side, feeling every brush of grass blades against his skin like they’re piercing all the way through him; feeling the sun so bright and warm in the sky it’s burning him up hotter inside than he’s ever been; and seeing the boy next to him so clear in his eyes, all charm and handsomeness so present, that Kurt has to look at his own knees to keep from staring. 

God is testing me, he realises, scared. 

He feels frail, like the sparse daises smattered across the grass around them, weathered by ignorant footsteps and desperate little hands pulling them to pieces. Whatever may happen feels like something big either way, something definitive - whether it’s good or bad, or nothing at all.

“I’m Sam,” the boy tells him, and there’s a smile in his voice - there’s always a smile for Kurt. Sam nudges Kurt’s shoulder with his own. “You’re Kurt.”

His big hand picks out a daisy by Kurt’s hip and careful fingertips pluck one tiny petal off. 

Kurt watches, a surge of something in his chest, hopeful and alive.

“I see you a lot,” Sam adds, intently working on halfing a petal with his blunt nails. Then, looking almost embarrassed, he turns to Kurt, cheeks pink and lips wetted and states like a confession, “I feel like I see you all the time.”

Determinedly, Kurt looks back with surprised, soft eyes. He swallows, mouth too dry to form words, then agrees, “You do.” 

It’s hasty, small-voiced. Kurt wishes they were in his old bedroom, his real one, with the door locked, the blinds drawn, two of them safe together on his tiny old mattress to do something more. Kurt wishes he could kiss Sam out here in the open air and wherever else he liked, and whenever, and that there were no doubts in his mind about Sam not liking him back this way because they could tell each other in words instead of Kurt, alone, looking too deeply into quiet actions.

He thinks he might be right about Sam, though. Thinks it again when Sam’s hand goes limp and drops the daisy because he’s staring distractedly at Kurt’s lips, his eyes intent and lips parted.

Kurt swallows again and feels brave. “I see you, too.” 

Unblinking, Sam keeps looking at him, his mouth stretching back into its crooked, pleased smile. 

You’re all I see anymore, Kurt wants to say, but he keeps it and hopes he can say it later, when it doesn’t make him think of the parents he’s lost, the home, that other life; when instead it’s thoughts of the goodness of Sam, the sweet way he tastes, maybe, or the appealing smell of his endearingly ugly tie-dye T-shirt. 

He keeps looking, heart hammering, and feels a thrill low in his stomach at the weight of Sam’s eyes on him. There is no one around, he assures himself, and when their eyes meet, Sam’s grin spreads even further and crinkles the corner of his eyes. He let’s out this low, giddy laugh that Kurt feels warm against his mouth and can’t stop himself breathlessly echoing.

He’s light inside, weightless, happier than he has been since his dad was drafted and sent away from him. He can’t stop himself - he leans in quickly, before the impulse leaves him, and touches their lips together in a light, hot touch. 

Sam moves closer almost immediately, cradling the side of Kurt’s face in one of his big, warm palms. He makes a contented sound in the back of his throat, then moves away slightly, lips gliding across Kurt’s skin to kiss the corners of his mouth with gentle slowness.

For a moment, Kurt stills and takes long breaths, stunned, his forehead kept against Sam’s and the tips of their noses touching. His head is blurry, almost delirious, and he can’t register anything around himself except the way Sam’s smile spreads steadily across his face, the way his eyes shine tellingly in the sunshine.

Sam puts his hand on Kurt’s chest, where his heart has finally calmed. He holds it there for a while, just smiling at him, and Kurt smiles back until the rest of the world fades back into eyesight and he remembers he has to leave before his aunt hears of his truancy, that Sam will always be sitting here, smiling for him.

“You’re somethin’,” Sam calls out as he’s walking away, watching Kurt the entire time and looking even happier than usual. 

For once, Kurt let’s himself look back and smile longer than he has at Sam before.

He doesn’t see Sam again that day, but he finds a daisy on the hood of his car at the end of school, the petals shaped into an uneven heart, and he takes it home and places it carefully on cross against his window, something tender inside of him beginning to heal.

*

It’s 1926.

Sam’s parents have finally succeeded in setting him up with the girl next door, Quinn, who stuck her nose up at his sci-fi books when they were five and never spoke to him in high-school, when he hadn’t grown into his looks yet. Yesterday, she asked him to take her out dancing, and he said that it sounded good to him because he didn’t want to disappoint his parents, even though it still sounds disastrous and terrible to him because he doesn’t know how to dance, not one bit.

Tonight, his mom picks out an old suit of his dad’s and combs back his hair, looking into his face and saying, “Imagine she’d known then how handsome you’d turn out.”

Sam smiles uncomfortably and doesn’t tell her that having a girlfriend means a thousand times more to her than it ever has for him; but it lingers on his tongue, always does. She pushes a stubborn strand of hair back and kisses his face, looking prouder than he thinks he’s ever seen her.

His parents see him out the door excitedly, hopefully, and he knows when he knocks on hers that they’re both peeking out the window, watching him and probably praying.

The Fabrays like him well enough because his family are good Christians, but in no way is Sam’s family as well off as they are, which he knows is important, possibly fatal to anything that could happen between he and their daughter. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, not really.

After some stilted small talk at the door with Quinn’s dad, she appears in her cloche hat and big coat, smiling tightly. She argues her father away as quickly as she can and then closes the door behind herself, patting at the soft curls of her hair before facing Sam again.

They smile at each other, stiffly. She’s pretty, Sam thinks, and knows he could never feel anything, anything for her at all.

After a pause, he offers his arm out and she takes it with the same hesitance.

-

_La Deuxième_. Sam has never been to a club before, or been any good at French, but it’s nice inside - low lights, good music, cheap enough drinks. 

He pretends he likes wine because she does and clinks their glasses together, dreading the taste, while they stand at the empty bar and watch the crowd on the dance floor. It lasts too long, with her eyes on him expectantly and his caught on a tall, dark-haired boy doing the Charleston with a pretty girl and wearing a two colour suit bolder and shinier than anyone else’s looks from here at least. Something worrying happens inside Sam’s chest when he catches the boy laughing, brightly, but he doesn’t want to turn away. Sometimes Sam lets himself do things he wants to, as long a they’re small and harmless enough.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” Quinn asks, and when he looks at her, she’s cocking an unimpressed, perfectly shaped eyebrow at him. She’s beautiful, Sam thinks, and knows he could never feel anything, anything for her at all.

He swallows and let’s out a nervous laugh. “I’m no good at it,” he warns, but he puts his hand out anyway and she pulls him into the sea of dancing bodies, all moving in lively steps to every beat.

That isn’t the case when Sam joins.

He has no rhythm, no control over the lazy way his limbs flop, no understanding of more than one dance move at a time. Quinn looks embarrassed and avoids his eyes, enthusiasm dwindling, then spots a face in the crowd that brightens her up again.

It’s a girl she knows, the pretty one from earlier, who Quinn runs towards holding her skirt up - Sam obligingly following - and ends up getting distracted in an animated conversation with. Eventually she remembers him there by her side, and hastily says, “Sam, this is Brittany, Brittany, this is Sam.” Then, awkwardly: “He’s a family friend.”

“Hi there, Sam,” Brittany greets, smiling, her face flushed from dancing. 

He nods his head at her politely, smiling, and less than politely wonders to himself where her date has gone.

Apparently, she’s wondering the same thing. She rises up on her tiptoes, looking around them. “Kurt just went to get us some drinks, he shouldn’t be long - you remember Kurt, right Quinnie? He’s the best dance partner here.”

Quinn’s eyebrows raise, and she gives Sam a look. “Maybe he could help out Sam here learn which foot is which,” she jokes, hitting him with her purse in an imitation of playfulness. He knows she means what she’s saying though, and that’s confirmed when she follows it up with, “It’d give us time to catch up.”

She wants rid of him. It’s fine, really, because Sam wants to spend time Brittany’s date, who shows up a second later in a cloud of smoke, cigarette in mouth in glass in hand, face even sweeter up close. 

He passes the glass to Brittany, says, “Looks like we’ve got some company,” with a pretty voice and an arm around her waist.

The corners of his lips quirk around his cigarette when his eyes catch briefly on Sam before flicking to his side.

“Nice to see you again, Quinn,” he acknowledges, inclining his head. She echoes the sentiment while Kurt visibly sizes Sam up through his sharp blue eyes, then takes the cigarette out of his mouth and uses it to gesture to Sam, asking in an upwards stream of smoke, “Who’s your date?”  
“Sam,” Sam answers, locking eyes with him while he offers his hand out. “I’m a friend of Quinn’s.” And even that’s a stretch.

Kurt takes another drag, giving him a wary, considering look, then shakes his hand firmly. 

“Hi, Sam. I’m Kurt.” He leans very slightly closer. “A friend of Brittany’s.”

Heat travels up Sam’s spine. He lets go of Kurt’s hand with silent reluctance, looks at him longer than he should, then places a hand on the small of Quinn’s back to keep himself grounded.

“Apparently he’s not a very good dancer,” Brittany stage-whispers behind her hand. 

The way Kurt looks at him makes Sam feel hot, like his shirt’s too tight, or his skin. One of his eyebrows arches up, and Sam wonders if there’s fire somewhere inside of him when he asks, smilingly, “Oh?”

Quinn subtly elbows Sam’s arm to move his hand away again, then she smiles at Kurt, big and fake. “Maybe you could give him a hand.” She gestures between herself and Brittany. “We girls have some catching up to do.” 

“Sure, okay,” Kurt agrees, the quirk in his smile polite and the pink in his cheeks flustered. He gives Sam a look, taking a brief, thoughtful draw of his cigarette. “Are you alright with that, Sam?”

Sam nods, hastily, knows his cheeks are a little red, too, his smile a little too big. The way Kurt looks at him - it’s different, the kind that Sam knows well.

“We’ll get out of your hair, then,” Kurt says, nodding his head towards the door and leading the way there.

They maneuver through the dancing crowd, narrowly avoiding their feet being stepped on by blunt heels or losing each other in the swarm. Sam follows the trail of smoke from Kurt’s mouth and feels it spreading in the air, warmly touching his skin and the breath inside his lungs.

Outside, it’s cooler and the small strip between the club and a closed up appliance store is much, much emptier. There, Kurt steps on the remains of his cigarette and gives Sam a small smile.

“I’ll take it you and Quinn aren’t too fond of each other.”

With slightly unsteady hands, Sam loosens his tie and undoes the first few buttons of his shirt. He’s still too hot. “Yeah,” he admits in a rushed breath. “Our parents are pushing us together, but -” 

He shrugs, aware that Kurt most likely understands the rest, despite the quiet pause that follows.

“It’s a hard thing,” Kurt agrees, his voice soft, knowing.

Kurt can’t exist, Sam thinks, scuffing his nice shoes on the concrete nervously, because once he asked his dad if boys ever didn’t like girls, or if two girls ever married, or two boys, and he’d given him a stunned look, eyes scared, and said no, no they don’t; he’d asked a second time, older with more careful words, and his dad told him not to ask again; and nobody else ever mentioned it, really, and he never knew people like the ones he wanted to be real, so he tried forgetting and he still wishes that would work.

But there Kurt is, tall and sweet, all flushed freckled cheeks and bright, boyish eyes. He looks wary of Sam, maybe even scared - maybe something else, Sam thinks, and his heart beats thickly in his chest.

Even though he tries not to, Sam can’t stop himself smiling at him. It’s crooked, dopey, a little adoring. There’s something wonderful to him about a boy like Kurt existing - a boy like Sam.

In the streetlight glare, his eyes look soft, too, and his smile tighter. Then it spreads slightly, warms across his face, and he waves a hand. “C’mere.”

Sam obliges, walking closer to him, where their little spot almost becomes too dark to see each other. He can just make out the pale, freckled skin of Kurt’s cheek before he realises he’s too close. Then he catches a dimple there when Kurt laughs, quietly, pushing his chest so he’s the tiniest inch back.

He hums. “You know the Charleston?” 

“I know of it,” Sam answers, uncertain. Too much footwork. He’s no good with his feet. He’s no good with any part of his body when it comes to dancing, really, and when he says as much as a warning, Kurt only laughs again.  
His hands fumble for Sam’s, tugging one to lie flat across his back and the other to be held very lightly in his own. Sam makes out the vague feeling of Kurt’s fingers on his arm, and lets himself grin the big way he wants to because it’s dark, and nobody can see.

“Side to side,” Kurt says, pulling Sam a few unsure steps to the left, then back again. “Two steps left, and one right.”

They try it, and Sam doesn’t know if he’s doing so badly this time because he always does or because he can’t pay attention to anything, too caught up in the warmth and solidness of Kurt’s body. He smells like good cologne, and the skin of his hands are soft like petals.

Even Kurt fumbles, then stops altogether, breaths sounding unsteady.

“I’m distracted,” he mutters, and Sam’s close enough to hear his embarrassment and the sound his throat makes swallowing.

“That’s okay,” he assures him, using the hand on his back to hesitantly, nervously rub once up and down the tense muscle there. “I am too.”

It’s all so strange, he thinks, but he hopes it doesn’t end. He hopes he holds Kurt like this for days, or at least for long enough to remember the way it makes him feel. He hopes the sun shoots back into the sky and he gets to memorize the way Kurt looks in the sunlight, holding him back. It’s strange, because he thought he’d learned to stop hoping.

He’s still grinning, he realises, so big his face is sore from the stretch. Kurt’s hand untangles from his and cautiously reaches out, soft fingertips at the corner of his mouth. Sam holds his breath and stills and hopes and hopes, and Kurt’s fingertips then faintly trace the curves of his upper lip.

“Oh,” he breathes again, and this time Sam thinks he sounds hurt.

Sam takes his hand again, squeezes it briefly, then turns it to kiss between his knuckles, feeling the shakiness of both of their hands against his lips, that surge of adrenaline fueled happiness mixed with something hopeless and perpetual. He kisses each knuckle, heart pleased and hammering in his chest, then the soft tips of Kurt’s every finger, then he just stands with his mouth kept against the back of Kurt’s warm hand, both of them trying to calm their breathing and the loud, low duet of their heartbeats.

“We should get back inside,” Kurt says, quietly, the hand still resting on Sam’s bicep squeezing.

“Yeah,” Sam mumbles, lips still pressed to the back of his palm, “Okay.”

Their hands brush all the way inside, to the bar where Quinn and Brittany are in oblivious conversation together. When Quinn sees him she’s suddenly tired, suddenly needs to get home, and the way Kurt smiles at Sam when he shakes his hand goodbye - the way he looks like he can’t stop smiling the same way Sam can’t, even if his eyes look a little wet, too - and says, quietly enough for no-one else to hear, “Thank you for the dance,” makes something burn up inside of him, an elated high that he glides on all the way back home.

*

(It’s 2012, and Kurt is leaving. 

It’s probably the last time they’ll see each other, Sam thinks, when he’s standing in the Hummel-Hudson entrance with his suitcase packed to go back to Tennessee while Carole and Burt are upstairs standing over Kurt’s, deciding what to give him to start with before they ship the rest. 

He stands, staring at a photograph of eight year old schoolboy Kurt that sits the table in the hall that he’s seen almost every day for almost a year. He imagines it gone, then squeezes his eyes shut and knows it’s time to head home, already.

Outside, on the way to his car, he bumps into Kurt himself, fresh from a shift at the Lima Bean - and he remembers this isn’t home for Kurt, anymore. Kurt is miserable here, and just because it makes his friends sad doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to leave and be happy. Sam doesn’t even remember Kurt being happy here often, when he thinks about it, and he wishes he could change it, step into the past and fix everything that ever made him feel bad, and make Lima somewhere he’d want to stay a little longer in, maybe.

Kurt flashes him a brief, small smile, and he remembers two years ago, shaking Kurt’s hand and seeing him for the first time. He remembers Karofsky; and the way Kurt’s clothes were way too small on him but smelled of nice like flowery detergent and felt soft on his skin; and sitting on the couch together with his toes tucked under Kurt’s leg, watching a dozen movies. He remembers the lonely sound of Kurt’s voice in the auditorium, and the silent way his throat strained and bruised to sing back to him.

It just feels so abrupt for him to leave.

“Sam,” Kurt says after another moment, waving a confused hand at him.

 _You’re important to me_ , Sam wants to reply, but he’d know it was odd; it’d ruin the surprise. 

Instead, he puts an arm around Kurt and draws him close for a moment, squeezing his shoulders and pressing his lips tightly together to avoid saying anything stupid. Kurt stiffens under physical contact most of the time - Sam has to catch him in quick, surprising moments like these, so Sam’s learnt to always do it that way, to wrap him up in his arms on sharp impulses every time he leaves for the weekend and every time they say goodnight in the hallway, and whenever else he wants to. This time, Kurt reaches up and hugs him back on tiptoes, arms noticeably lighter around him than Sam’s are, as always, something that still kind of breaks his heart. 

“Take care,” Kurt says, voice quiet and faltering, like he knows this is it. He holds Sam with tight arms for the first time, holds him closer to himself than ever before.

Then, Sam does all the things he doesn’t want to at this moment: smiles, tells him, “See you next week,” and pulls away - and that’s it, he thinks, watching Kurt disappear inside with pain in his heart like he has a hundred bruises there, and they’re all being pressed at once.)

*

It’s 1964.

Kurt has a role in a small touring production with an actress named Rachel Berry, who swears Barbra Streisand is out to get her when she’s drunk but cried when they scraped enough money to see her together in New York as Fanny Brice. She’s the only person he talks to in his real voice anymore, who has never minded how soft and strange it is, and after every show he’s the person who claps hardest for her, because they are alone together, she told him once, dramatically clutching his hands and looking into his eyes and saying, “Nobody else could love us right.”

Even though he knows it’s true, it’s hurts to think of too much. There have been boys, passingly, for the two of them, but Kurt is too scared of the story of Rachel’s father to have done much with any of them and Rachel is too focused on what she says really matters.

Like being given the spotlight, and afterwards, flowers.

“They’re for you, he said,” she tells him after going out to see the boy holding a bouquet outside. She looks surprised and maybe a little embarrassed, that slight trace of fear in her eyes that’s always there after the sight of a new boy, a new threat. 

Kurt blinks at her, just as surprised. His cheeks are a little warm at the idea - there’s never been a boy waiting outside with flowers before, only some sparse, misled girls - or once, his dad. 

“Oh,” he says, unmoving. Then he glances quickly at himself in the mirror and puts on the face he wears onstage, the voice, the stance.

It’s not him, but it’s who the people watching want him to be.

-

The man is blond and tall with a shy smile and a big bouquet of every colour Kurt can think of held in his arms. His shirt is tight across his chest and his jeans flare out at his feet, and when Kurt sees him he has to blink again and take another moment to school the look in his eyes and calm the frantic beating of his heart. 

Boys have no right looking like this, he thinks, breaching the distance between them and looking up into the man’s crinkled, shiny green eyes.

“Can I help you?” he asks, pleasant enough, his voice lowered enough, and the muscles in the man’s face twitch into what briefly looks like a frown, then they all go back to smiling too broadly at Kurt for him to handle.

The man clears his throat. “I’m - my name’s Sam. I came to watch you tonight because… because…” Embarrassedly shaking his head at himself, Sam lifts his arm up and pulls his cuff down over his wrist, exposing some small, smudged drawings Kurt stares at with bemusement. “We went to school together,” Sam deciphers, slowly, then he glances up into Kurt’s face and adds, “You won’t remember me. You sang in the choir, then, and I…” Beneath them, his feet are nervously toeing the Ohio dirt. “I liked your voice a lot. I still do.” He offers out the bouquet, tells Kurt earnestly, “These are for you.”

Something in Kurt kind of flutters. He takes the flowers into careful arms and feels them, pleasantly heavy in his hold. There are so many, all mismatched colours and different kinds, all clashing. He breathes them in and says, softer than he intends to, “Thank you.” Afterwards, while he inwardly berates himself, he follows up with a deeper voice, “They’re - they’re lovely.”

Sam grins, shy and crooked, then his lips press tightly together and his brow furrows. He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “You, uh, you sound different now. The way you talk.”

“People don’t like the way I used to talk,” Kurt reminds him, holding the flowers a little closer to his chest. If Sam was at the same school, he’d know. It used to be hell with a voice like that; like this.

Sam runs a hand through his pushed-up hair, blond strands falling out of place as he does it, and shrugs. “I do.” 

It’s unfair, Kurt thinks, smiling to himself. They’re in small-town Ohio and tomorrow he’s gone, again, and this is the last boy that will bring his flowers as he goes. Sam has a sweet smile, sweet eyes, has a dozen sweet things to say, and it’s not fair at all.

“I was wonderin’, could you…” Sam fishes through his pocket and pulls out a slip of paper and a little pen, offering them out. “Could you sign this? There were some people at school who said they’d be big stars but you know, I think that’s gonna be you.”

Kurt stares at him, big-eyed, then shakes his head. He’s smiling, though. “You sign it,” he insists, in his real, soft voice. “For me.”  
Surprised, Sam blinks at him. He laughs through his big, sweet smile. “Alright,” he agrees, nodding, pleased. 

He gives Kurt another glance then pushes the paper to fit into his palm and writes across it in quick, uneven lines. After he’s done, he holds it for another moment, looking down at it consideringly, then leans down and presses his lips against it with his eyes closed and the corners of his mouth tilted up.  
“There,” he says, quietly, and he offers it out to Kurt, who looks at him with a returning warm smile and takes it from his hand.

Carefully, he places it inside the bouquet, with the messy, endearing scrawl of _SAM EVANS_ facing outwards, along with his kiss.

Rachel’s voice calls on his from inside and he feels like he’s snapped out of a daze, or a dream, but Sam smiles at him with understanding and backs away, waving a hand.  
“Thank you,” Kurt says again, loud enough for him to hear, and Sam calls it back to him before he disappears.

*

It’s 2014, and they get luckier than they’ve ever, ever been before.

“It’s weird, having you here,” Kurt observes, then he covers his mouth with a hand and yawns. 

They’re lying on the pull-out couch together - now known as Sam’s bed - watching infomercials and eating some of the chocolate Sam bought at the airport this morning. Rachel is asleep, already, and Sam keeps dozing off but waking himself back up again, feeling restless under his skin and overly happy with the way Kurt’s legs are draped over his, the way they’re lying with each other and the assured warmth of Kurt’s body at his side.

“Not bad weird,” Kurt clarifies, popping another tiny square of chocolate into his mouth. He gives Sam a look, his eyes crinkled, and nudges Sam’s ankle with his own. “It’s weirdly familiar, actually.” 

Sam watches him with a sleepy smile, his heart aching the same way it has for two years - maybe longer, he thinks, suddenly.

Half-asleep, he feels for Kurt’s hand on the hard mattress and curls his own around it, tightly. Kurt’s fingers twitch beneath his, gently squeezing back, and Sam hums a soft tune through his smile, contented, hopeful. 

This time, he won’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> For [charmedbysamkurt](charmerbysamkurt.tumblr.com) for the 2012 Canoe Christmas.


End file.
